…. and[not mentioned on the podcast
but also worth considering
for younger kids.]

Jane Kelly is the co-founder of Eat Your Books, the only website in the world that searches through all your recipes – from your cookbooks, magazines and online sources. She was a senior manager and CEO in the music and TV industry in the UK. In the late 90s she started and ran a website selling cookbooks. She loves to cook though is cursed by a family of fussy eaters whereas she will happily eat everything (which is probably also a curse). She lives near Boston.

PeteBaker is the Kitchen Manager at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre Massachusetts. He spends much of his time on food and drink related activities including bread baking and pizza making in a homemade outdoor wood-fired clay oven, keeping bees and chickens, and tending to a very large vegetable garden and small orchard as well as foraging for mushrooms. He also is an avid home brewer.
This week’s test cookbook #2: Bread Illustrated: a Step by Step Guide to Achieving Bakery Quality Results at Home, by America’s Test Kitchen

Episode 15 Music

“Holiday 2,” by Dave Depper

“Pixelland,” by Kevin MacLeod

“Darxieland,” by Kevin MacLeod

“Avareh,” by Mamak Khadem

Episode 15 Sound Effects

Lethbridge Sounds, and others hosted at freesound.org, soundbible.com, and looperman.com, as well as my own recordings.

The Level Teaspoon’s theme music: Não me touques, performed by The Bees Knees International Café Orchestra

Hear it all on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or find it by searching for “The Level Teaspoon” any other podcast service you may use!

Sally Ekus is a literary agent and co-owner of The Lisa Ekus Group, a full service culinary agency specializing in literary and talent representation. She represents a wide range of culinary talent, from first-time cookbook authors to seasoned chefs, professional food writers to bloggers, and internet and television personalities (and she also represented my own book, A Spoonful of Promises!). Sally loves being the liaison between an author and their publisher, and takes great pride in guiding authors towards their dreams of publication. Sally has a deep love of phở, anything spicy, and of course TACOS! You can follow her on Instagram @SallyEkus.

Molly Stevens is a food writer, cookbook author, editor and cooking teacher living in Northern Vermont. Her cookbook All About Roasting: A New Approach to a Classic Art (WW Norton, 2011) won a 2012 James Beard Foundation Award and two International Association of Culinary Professionals Awards. Previously, her cookbook All About Braising: The Art of Uncomplicated Cooking (WW Norton, 2004) also won a 2005 James Beard Foundation Award and an International Association of Culinary Professionals Award. Molly’s articles and recipes appear regularly in Fine Cooking magazine where she is a contributing editor. She has contributed regularly to Saveur, Bon Appétit, and Eating Well magazines. Her recipes and tips have also appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Everyday with Rachel Ray, Real Simple, Yankee, Easy Living (UK), Drinks, Real Food, and House & Garden (South Africa) magazines.

“I am the Cookbook Promotions Manager for Eat Your Books and the founder of The Cookbook Junkies, a Facebook group of 38,000 cookbook fanatics and website of the same name located here. I wrote a column on cookbook reviews for TasteBook and I write a bi-weekly column for Sunday Supper Movement. I also provide reviews for Publishers Weekly. A New Yorker for over 15 years, I moved to Colorado three years ago with my husband and son, Andrew who is 12. I am an avid cook and baker – and have far too many kitchen related items and cookbooks (4000) in my home.”

Something different this week: I begin my annual search for the Best Recipes of 2016.In this episode, we look at one of them: Ningbo Omelet with Dried Shrimp and Chives, from Land of Fish and Rice by Fuchsia Dunlop. Fuchsia and her publisher, W. W. Norton, were kind enough to grant me permission to reprint the recipe here.

Trim off and discard the white ends off the chives, and cut the green leaves into 2 in (5mm) sections. Heat 1 tablespoon cooking oil in your wok or pan, then stir-fry the shrimp until they smell delicious and are faintly golden. Remove and set aside.

Beat the eggs, add the Shaoxing wine, shrimp and chives, and season with salt and pepper. Pour the remaining cooking oil into a hot, seasoned wok or frying pan. When it is hot, pour in the egg mixture. Use a wok scoop to push in from the sides of the omelet several times, allowing the runny egg mixture to fill the space you have created. When there is no longer enough runny egg to do this, leave the omelet to fry over a medium flame until the base is golden and the eggs are nearly set.

Cover the omelet with a plate and carefully invert the pan so the omelet turns out on to the plate, then slide it back into the pan and cook the other side until golden. Slide the omelet onto a chopping board. Cut it into 1 1/2 in (4cm) strips, then cut the strips diagonally into chopstickable slices. Pile up on a serving dish.Also: assorted breakfast recipes from Rise and Shine, by Katie Sullivan-Morford, with guest Jandro Levins.

Alejandro Levins is an entrepreneur, investor and consultant interested in improving our food system through innovation. His love of eating and feeding others led to his love of cooking, which he does nearly every day.

Kathy Gunst is the author of 15 cookbooks; her latest book is Soup Swap (Chronicle Books). She is a James Beard award winning food journalist and the Resident Chef for NPR’s Here and Now, heard on over 450 public radio stations.

Janice Telfer, is a professor in the Department of Veterinary and Animal Sciences at the University of Massachusetts and works on making better vaccines against deadly diseases in animals and humans. She has a special relationship with Persian food, and made her own triple tier wedding cake with hazelnut meringue discs interleaved with raspberry puree, white chocolate cream cheese frosting and white chocolate ivy leaves .

Peter Stuart has worked as a radio broadcaster, and producer, a community development provocateur, environmental technology champion, news editor and recently in the aged care sector. He reads voraciously, eats and drinks safe in the knowledge his metabolism is just super and still dances to disco music. Oh and he plays with tarot cards too.

Miranti, a self-described “rogue chef, style maker, and stage ham,” is an Indonesian native and a Brooklyn transplant who has many lives. Fashion design took her to New York City and the performance art world took her to the glamour and grit of its underground. Recently she won an episode on the recent new Food Network show Cooks vs. Cons, a cooking competition pitting pro chefs against talented amateurs . This win prompted her to create a platform for herself where she can combine the three passions, design style, performance and cooking. Please follow her upcoming website www.joyoffeasting.com where she talks about food from personal stories and cross cultural points of view. Also follow her on Instagram @thejoyoffeasting to get visual stories and video clips.

“I work in medical research, specifically ophthalmic research, at a hospital in Manhattan. My work used to involve taking photographs of retinas for diagnostic purposes, and surgical video in the O.R. for teaching purposes. These days I work more on textbooks, educational websites, and helping to produce professional meetings for various sub-specialties such as glaucoma.

I consider myself a democratic food snob- I will try just about anything in pursuit of good food. It doesn’t have to be fancy, and it doesn’t have to be expensive. This is obviously a wide open area with many definitions since everyone thinks their food is “good food”. I’ve often found that they’re right- there’s a lot of good food out there as long as you’re willing to search for it. Sadly, there’s also a LOT of bad food, and I cannot and will not waste my time on McDonalds and its ilk. For me the starting point for good food is it has to be real, as in not manufactured in a factory, not made from over-processed ingredients, etc. I think the test of a culture’s food is its street food- if they can do that well, they’re off to a damned good start!”